On Thursday, Oct. 30, during the CHIME Fall Forum being held at the J.W. Marriott Resort and Spa in San Antonio, the leaders of the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Orem, Ut.-based KLAS Enterprises announced a new partnership around data-sharing.
According to the press release provided to members of the media on Thursday morning, “The partnership between CHIME and KLAS, effective January 1, 2015, is designed to accelerate and enhance industry performance and support all stakeholders in a rapid new era of healthcare transformation. The partnership, announced today from the CHIME14 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, will include expanded research, benchmarking, award collaboration, and advocacy support.”
The press release also included a statement from CHIME board chair Randy McCleese. In the statement, McCleese, the CIO of St. Clare Regional Medical Center in Morehead, Ky., said, “Like KLAS, CHIME is dedicated to helping our members and vendor partners perform at the highest level. This mutually beneficial partnership will help strengthen our commitment to industry high-standards in patient care quality, efficiency and safety."
"Providers want to be heard and counted," added Kent Gale, founder of KLAS. "Working together with CHIME, we can better amplify the provider voice to help healthcare vendors align their delivery to achieve provider organization success."
Under the terms of the partnership, KLAS will serve as CHIME's primary research organization, and KLAS will work closely with CHIME for best practice information sharing and healthcare information technology research.
"We are thrilled to collaborate with the industry research professionals of KLAS who have made a superb contribution to healthcare IT performance and standards," said CHIME President and CEO Russell P. Branzell, FCHIME, CHCIO. "Our members, together with KLAS, will help foster industry excellence and drive healthcare transformation forward."
In informal remarks to members of the press Wednesday evening prior to the official announcement Thursday morning, Branzell explained the logic of the new partnership, saying, “We could either build it ourselves or partner, and partnering made sense. We think with a great partner like this, we thought we could move things faster. To change the industry, we need to measure faster.” And with the new partnership, he said, “We’ll facilitate ways to get information faster to our members.” At the same informal gathering of press Wednesday evening, KLAS’s Adam Gale added that “The bottom line is that we want to measure faster, we want to measure deeper. The goal is to have a faster process so that we can hold vendors accountable and so providers can win.”
